


Where the Two Ends Meet

by bluemoodblue



Series: Broken Tattoo [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Kravitz Week 2019, Memory Loss, Memory Returned, day three: bounty payment / gambling, reaper work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 00:48:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17818649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoodblue/pseuds/bluemoodblue
Summary: "An experience. A small piece of a greater whole. It's yours now, Kravitz. It will always be within your reach."Kravitz didn't know how much he'd lost when he agreed to come with his queen to the Astral Plane, the cost of the golden lines intersecting and re-writing the symbols and claims on his back, but he could feel the gap between who he'd been and who he was now.Kravitz Week, day three: Bounty Payment / Gambling





	Where the Two Ends Meet

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I skipped a day. And this ended up being a follow-up to the day one fic I wrote for the week, so it might make more sense if you read that one first.

After the first bounty - a man named Rett in an unfamiliar seaside town, who pleaded and apologized for some grievance that Kravitz couldn't make any sense of - the Raven Queen placed a small, smooth stone in Kravitz's hand.   
  
"Your payment for a job well done," she said warmly, closing his hand around the bit of sea glass with both of hers. Her touch was colder than his by far, but nothing else about his queen seemed cold to him. All of her warmth was in her eyes and in her voice, the tone of an affectionate mother attempting to guide her child away from past mistakes. Even the strange things about her - the shifting faces and uncertain form - weren't so strange to him.  As she'd told him days after coming to her realm, only the living fear death.   
  
"I thought I was paying off a debt."   
  
She chuckled. "In a sense. But honest work should always be rewarded, and your debt is not a chain around your neck, Kravitz. My aim is not to make you suffer."

Kravitz didn't have any worldly needs anymore - he was never hungry or thirsty, and "tired" was something new that required rest, not sleep. There was nothing that money could buy for him, which was just as well since the stone appeared to be a worthless trinket. "Thank you," he said, doing his best to sound grateful. He missed the mark and landed somewhere near confused instead. Which was fair, he thought - the Raven Queen might be kind to him, but he didn't always understand her. He could... put the rock on a shelf, probably.

Then he heard, for the first time - for the thousandth time - the roll of waves and the call of sea birds. He was still standing in the Astral Plane's Court, but he could feel damp sand under his feet and a gentle, salty breeze blow past him. He could feel the water, cool on a hot day or freezing in the winter, lapping at his shins and then up to his shoulders. Fish and seaweed brushed past his arms, and the sun warmed his face.   
  
_ A beach, _ he thought, but he knew it wasn't any ocean. Kravitz knew this place, but he couldn't say how. The familiarity was unexplainable; he couldn't pinpoint what made it different or what called out to him. He just knew that everything he felt was his already.   
  
When he glanced over to her, the Raven Queen was smiling; he could see the glint of the sun on the waves superimposed on her shifting face, and the blues and greens of deep water at her feet. "What is this?"   
  
He looked down at the bit of sea glass for the treasure it was.

In time, it was joined by a strange collection - shelves full of what an outsider might have assumed was useless junk but which Kravitz saw as pieces of a puzzle he was slowly assembling. The glass bead recalled the feeling of hair, delicately braided between deft fingers in the quiet of an evening, with the crackle of a cheerful fire nearby. A thin needle reminded him of the feel of thread and fabric, the careful consideration of color and texture that had not been his natural talent but a shaky, acquired skill. A fork, genuine silver and one of the few things he owned worth any significant monetary value, gave him the taste of a spice cake, and homemade lemonade, and hearty stews. A little button, engraved with a daisy, smelled like wildflowers mixed with the sea breeze. And once they were handed to him, they were his; they stayed in his mind as if they had never left, and the gap was a little smaller and wider all at once.

Kravitz didn't know if he would ever have all of it back. He was afraid to ask, and more afraid to wonder what was still missing as the years passed. The empty spaces that remained felt too much like people. It scared him, to think of who might not be there.

He didn't think about it. He didn't wonder. He enjoyed the memories on his shelf and convinced himself that whatever his queen chose to give him would be enough. The world changed, and the world changed again. Kravitz saw unbelievable things, visited, fought, and arrested an endless stream of interesting people (if disrespectful towards the laws of death). His experiences, in the thousands, would make any mortal jealous. But in all of them, he stood on the outside. He was a stone on the edge of a rapid river - he watched the changes as a still, unmoving, unchanging observer. He was dead.

When the reality of his death was too much, when he felt too still and cold and the sound of his heart not beating was too loud in the silence, he picked up a piece from his shelf - a single tine removed from a set of chimes - and let the sound of laughter fill his mind. It was a reminder that he was something to someone once. There was a day when he made someone else laugh. And he felt a little more like Kravitz and a little less like a reaper.

~~~

"You are smiling," the Raven Queen told him as he passed through her court. There was a grin - in a thousand different, flickering forms - on her own face as she made her observation. Kravitz pretended not to notice.   
  
"The assignment went... well." It was an exaggeration to call it an assignment, and an understatement to say it went well. "Exceedingly well." Still an understatement, but getting closer. "The incident in Refuge wasn't the fault of the people living there, and the cause has been removed and destroyed."   
  
"Ah, so you are smiling for the good fortune of the people in Refuge." Her smile widened, and Kravitz chose to stare at a pillar instead of the knowing face of his queen. "How very kind of you, Kravitz, to think of them." He thought for a moment that he might be able to get away without saying anything else about his evening, but the Raven Queen’s attention hadn’t wavered. “You’ve been gone all evening. You had a lot to talk about with that handsome elf, I suppose?”

“Y-yeah,” Kravitz choked out, and his queen laughed.

The next time the Raven Queen rewarded Kravitz, he was handed a full pouch of gold. Neither the bag nor the coins held any memories, and he looked up to her in confusion.

“Until now, I have restored what was lost as payment for your service. And until now, I believe that was enough to help you grow.” Her voice was the same calm, understanding tone she’d used when their deal was struck. “You must not always look behind you, Kravitz. Your memories will be returned to you in time, but you should also make new ones.” Her expression shifted to something more mischievous. “Take that handsome elf of yours out for a nice dinner.”

Kravitz clutched the bag. Of course she knew. It was difficult to keep secrets from the Raven Queen; beyond being a goddess she was very observant, and Kravitz was, perhaps, not as sneaky as he liked to think he was. “Taako, um. Taako says he’ll cook for me sometime.”

“Then buy a fiddle and play for him. It has been so long since you played.” Something in the wording made Kravitz hurt, an unaccountable feeling that he couldn’t trace and had to let go.

Kravitz smiled as well. “Aren’t I being punished anymore?”

And the Raven Queen, patient as a mother, leans over and kisses the top of his head. “You are being  _ reformed _ . I don’t wish for you to remain in my realm and stagnate, Kravitz. I wish for you to grow into something better. And you look so happy after you’ve seen him.”

Kravitz was going to die, again, right here in front of his queen and in direct defiance of all of her laws. He thanked her for the reward, picked a corridor that maybe led to his rooms or maybe led to the docks - he didn’t know and he didn’t care - and attempted to escape before he sank through the floor instead.

She couldn’t resist calling out after him. “Bring him to visit sometime. I would love to meet him.”

~~~

The shelves in Kravitz’s room continued to fill - a vase that looked more like a pot and reminded him of the feeling of Taako’s hands on his, a pin depicting a raven with garnet eyes that Lup bought for him for his (twins-assigned) birthday, mittens loaned to him by Barry and conveniently forgotten about by both of them. The shelves changed, too, moved to a little house too full of cats and so full of life. And while the memories still returned, and he still picked them up and worried at them, he had more to think about than what he’d lost.

The now and the before met somewhere in the middle, and sometimes Kravitz swore he could feel his heart beating.


End file.
